Abstracts

Abdul-Rahman, Alfarez, Hailes, Stephen. Supporting Trust in Virtual Communities. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 33. Jan 2000. [added Jan 04, 01]

Abstract: At any given time, the stability of a community depends on the right balance of trust and distrust. Furthermore, we face information overload, increased uncertainty and risk taking as a prominent feature of modern living. As members of society, we cope with these complexities and uncertainties by relying trust, which is the basis of all social interactions. Although a small number of trust models have been proposed for the virtual medium, we find that they are largely impractical and artificial. In this paper we provide and discuss a trust model that is grounded in real­world social trust characteristics, and based on a reputation mechanism, or word­of­mouth. Our proposed model allows agents to decide which other agents' opinions they trust more and allows agents to progressively tune their understanding of another agent's subjective recommendations.